TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8113, 6 April 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Dr R. H. Bakewell, of Auckland, baa a half-oolumn letter in the London Daily Mail complaining of a plethora of holidays iu New Zealand. "Altogether, 1 ' he saye, "including Sundays, we lose ninety days every year." "Whenever the observance of a holiday would interfere with the pleasure, or comfort, or convenience of the great majority," he adds, "no squeamish regard fur the rights or privileges of the minority is allowed to preveut its being dispensed with. JU 1 . r example, ou these holidays the people employed on the tramways, the ooastal steamers, at the livery stables and cab-stands, and in the publichouses, are all worked to exhaustion. Similarly restaurants are expected to be open to provide suoh of the holiday.makers as may not find it convenient to take their food to a picnio with a meal when required."

Mr Marconi tells a weird story in connection with bis system of wireless telegraphy. There is a station off Cape Clear tho utmost point of land to the westward of the British Isles. To this lonely station there comes shortly after the stroke of midnight a mysterious message, untranslitable.and incomprehensible But always at a certain point, there is delivered one wurd that is eve r the same. It is reoognisable only by

its unvarying sign. It belongs to no language known to this planet. For two years tbe mysterious communication bas never missed arriving Mr Marconi's explanation of the. phenomenon is as striking as>the incident itself. He believes it is Mars endeavouring to communioate with his sister planet. Why the message should exolasively reach this particular spot on earth, what Mars wants to say, and Therefore the unrequited patience of nightly repeating the communication through two years, are matters to be guessed at.

In 1805 (writes Mr O. P. Austin in tbe Eleotrical World) tho world bad not a single steamer upon the ocean, a single mile of railway on land, a single span of telegraph upon the continent, or a foot of oable beneath tbe ocean. In 1905 it haj over 18,000 steam vessels, 500,000 miles of railway, and more than 1,000,000 miles of land telegraph, while the very continents are bound together and given instantaneous communication by more than 200,000 miles of ocean cables, and the number of telephone messages sent annually aggregate six thousand millions, one-half of them being in tbe United States alone. The world's international commerce, which a single century ago was less than £400,000,000, is now £4.400,000.000, and less than forty millions sterling is now tbe oommeroe of tbe Orient, which was nearly six hundred millions.

Speaking at the annual dinner of theToowoomba Chamber of Commerce, Mr Kidsou, tbe Premier of Queensland, pointed out that the present trend'was toward co-opera-tion as against individualism. He did not say there was any hope or any fear uf their reaching the stage of pure communism or socialism. The oommon-sense of the community was a protection against extremes of any kind. Referriua: to tbe possibilities of Queen<>land, be said that two years ago there were under 8,000,000 sheep in Queensland, now there were over 14,000,000. There were likely to be 20,000,000 by theend cf the year. He hoped the end' of the financial year would show Queensland in a much better actual and prospeutive condition tbam she had been in for many years*

During hia recent visit to tbe Urewera Country, the Native Minister (Hon J. Carroll) spent two nights discussing with tbe leading Maoris the question of allowing tbeir lands to be thrown open to good prospectors. At first the chiefs were disinclined to allow prospecting to go on, but they were ready to libten to reason, and when it was pointed out to tbem that if gold did exist it would be more useful in their pockets than in tbe bowels of the earth, that successful mining meant food and clothing, they fell in with tbe Minister's proposal, and consented to tbe opening of tbeir lands to prospectors, with tbe provision that their rights should be maintained. This Mr Carroll informed them would be done by drawing up regulations, which would be submitted to tbe principal ohiefs, so that they might be proteoted, and might themselves embraoe tbe oDportunity of prospecting and pegging-off gold-bearing areas. regulations will be framed after conference between Cabinet unci natives, and then tbe Urewera will be properly and practically tested; This will bw undertaken at once, and within a year the regulations will, in all probability, be gazetted.

News received from Tahiti is to the effeot that although expeoted by the last steamer from San Francisco, the French offloial who was to report on tbe suitability of tbe Frenoh Islands for a convict settlement did not arrive by that steamer. The feeling in Tahiti itself, and especially amongst tbe mercantile portion of the oommunity, is to the effeot that it would be an unwise proceeding if a conviot settlement were established nearer than the Marqueß Islands, 600 miles from Tahiti. It is recognised that if proper representations are made by the New Zealand Government, through the Home authorities, to the French Government, baoked up by newspaper opinions, the project is not likely to be gone on with. The loss and disaster caused by the l«vte hurricane bas, however, for the present, prevented the people in Tahiti itself from taking any action in the matter.